Arriere-Grand-Mere Claudia
they say my great-grandmother could with the aid of poultice and incantation pluck a wart from your body throw it in the fire and you wouldn’t feel a thing
my father drove me up to her funeral along the frozen Connecticut river the air placid frigid silent we passed countless covered bridges
after the service in west stewartstown my uncle the organic dairy farmer in what may be his only suit remembered her as the woman who rubbed a holy medal on his irreversibly paralyzed leg and restored its motion
she came from brousseau mountain and it is said that ball lightning would roll down the hill past her house all the time
the last time i saw her in her wheelchair and party hat in the nursing home parking lot in view of the barbed wire fence of the local prison they were feeding her low-sodium corn bread she spoke little but she smiled wildly and without ceasing a smile suggesting a world of beautiful secrets she’ll never tell